"Historic cold and snow has been buffeting eastern Asia in recent weeks, including the nations of China, Japan and South Korea–more on the latter below.
Following the host of Chinese locales
breaking all-time low temperature records
this week (which include
Tuli River’s -42C (-43.6F);
Fuyuan’s -42.3C (-44.1F);
Wuying’s -43.3C (-45.9F); and
Jiayan’s -44.4C (-47.9F)),
the city of Hulunbuir has bested them all
with its low of –46.9C (-54.4F)
— thought to be the city’s
coldest temperature ever recorded.
Hulunbuir is located in northern China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region, and although the area is used to the cold, such a fierce and widespread chill –with much of northern China holding below -40C– has proved problematic for authorities.
... Since Dec 23, some 70 percent of China has experienced freezing temperatures, bitter winds, and snow after a severe Siberian cold wave descended deep into the country, with many locales, far more than I’ve mentioned above, enduring their lowest temperatures on record.
Seoul Registers Lowest Temp Since 1980
South Korea has been hit by historic snowfall and record freezes as the accumulative effect of low solar activity accelerates the cooling of Earth’s lower atmosphere — the troposphere.
South Korea’s lowest lows have been felt in northern parts of the country, as you’d expect — Cheorwon, located in Gangwon Province, registered the country’s coldest temperature this week — the -25.4C (-13.7F).
However, the biscuit was taken by Seoul — despite the well-documented Urban Heat Island effect, which has been found to skew metropolises and built-up areas to the warm side, the nation’s capital still managed to log a legendary low of -16C (3.2F) this week — the city’s coldest December temperature in 41 years, since 1980.
... Gangwon Province has notched as much as 56cm (22 inches) in recent days, while 17cm (6.7 inches) has been registered in what is considered the warmest part of South Korea, Jeju Island.
Transport disruptions and flight cancellations have arisen across all of East Asia, particularly in Japan where they’re measuring snow totals in the feet (7+ft in Sukayu):
13 Feet Of Snow Buries Parts Of Turkey
Particularly in eastern Turkey, and at elevations above 1,500 meters (4,900 feet), historic snowfall has managed to quite literally bury a number of locales,
most notably in Muş province where persistent heavy snowfall has seen accumulations climb to more than 4 meters (13+ feet), according to local media reports.
Adem Toprak, a worker who has been involved in snow-clearing operations, told Reuters he had a hard time believing the scale of the snow depth at first, and how the accumulation could be in meters.
“We live in the city center.
They said that the snow depth was around four meters here, but we didn’t believe that.
We came and saw that the snow depth here exceeded four meters,” he said.
... “Since the first day of snowfall, we had to reopen the roads of approximately 185 villages in our city twice,” said Seyhmus Yentur, secretary-general of Mus Special Provincial Administration.
“Our fight against snow continues uninterruptedly for 24 hours with 59 construction machineries and 90 personnel,” he added.
... Low temperatures in the valleys have been approaching -40C (-40F), which is astonishing given that the records for these regions rarely descend below -30C (-22F).
Göle, for example, aptly known as ‘The Siberia of Turkey’, is currently an ice box: “We are frozen, even the water in our homes is frozen,”
said local man Aleaddin Kılıç, who noted the mercury had been regularly dipping to -30C (-22F) overnight, freezing fountains, and coating trees in a thick white frost.
Vancouver Sees Coldest Temp Since 1969
After Canada’s first sub -50C in December since 1998, the polar cold has persisted and spread.
Vancouverites can usually count on relatively mild winter conditions, at least compared to typical Canadian chill — but not this month:
According to The Weather Network, Vancouver, B.C. reached a low -15.3C (4.5F) on Dec 27, which they described as “a radical departure from seasonal norms,” and the coldest temperature that Vancouver has seen in the past 52 years, since 1969:
The freezing weather can be credited to an Arctic outflow “funneling bitterly cold air down into southern B.C., which is then prevented from escaping”.
The fierce chill paired with Vancouver’s unusually snowy Christmas has made this a unique weather month, continues the article. But the uniqueness hasn’t just been confined to Vancouver; all of Western Canada has been holding exceptionally cold (and snowy) of late"
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Thursday, December 30, 2021
Hulunbuir, China Suffers Coldest Day Ever (-54.4F); Seoul Registers Lowest Temp Since 1980; 13 Feet Of Snow Buries Towns In Turkey; & Vancouver Sees Coldest Temp Since 1969 -
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